The Fallen Angel
by blingy16
Summary: A man forced to take shelter in his childhood home after waking up with a bout of minor amnesia finds corpses and realizes his only way to salvation is to find their murderer, who is trapped somewhere in the woods with him.


I woke up in the woods, feeling oddly serene. I can only remember bits and pieces about myself, and it's getting dark. My muscles ache, and I have no idea where my car is. For some reason, I'm just outside my childhood home, where Dad was murdered. Bad memories or not, I've got to get inside before it freezes up.

I must have patience while trying to remember, though-- everything happens eventually.

There's not really anything around, nothing I can really see, just a whole bunch of trees, dead headstones and nails jutting out of the forest floor.

I turn around, and I see the house. It's familiar at first, but suddenly everything seems to rush back, most of it at least. I know the cellar has a dirt floor. I know that the cellar has a tunnel leading outside. I know that there's a huge river behind the house, the one that runs through Ford.

I walked back into the house, strangely calm, the amnesia staring to fade, because now I can remember my name, where I live, and so on, right up to walking out my apartment complex, going-- where? Where the fuck was I going?

I haven't been here in years, no one has, but it's still been kept. By who, though, is my question. The maid quit years ago, and Mom's dead, dead because of 'The Hawk' who swept Harrison city a decade ago, right after we moved into the apartment and while Harrison wasn't Lucida. I shot the bastard, though. I shot him in the back once, in the arm once, and the chest twice. He went down for good, though, after a shot in the face from a Shotgun.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

I can hear branches outside, rustling against the new window panes, the first clue that I wasn't alone. The state and people like that don't help you out with this kind of stuff. You buy it, you pay for it, you own it. Unless someone uses that shit law that says they can take your land as long as they offer a fair price.

There's a creak on the floorboards above my head, something moving around-- I haven't moved at all, I'm just standing in the foyer, looking up. I can feel something's eyes on me, and I turn to look out the still open door I'm blocking, to see if anyone or anything is around that could explain this sense.

It's Fall, which means the trees are bare like I noticed before. Anything could be out there, waiting for me, under those leaves, damn it. I already know the score, and I can't let this stop me, no matter how unsettling those eyes are. They follow me and my movements, though. I study the surroundings outside for a moment longer.

I turn back to the inside, walk a few steps, and close the door behind myself. There's something in here as well, and I intend to keep it here. It's been here since I was a kid, something whispering to me in midst of silence, while I was home alone.

I pass the Kitchen, and I realize something is hanging from the ceiling fan, grostequely twisted and mangled, familiar even for some strange and disenchanting reason that's discomforting as well.

To my horror, I knew it was there in the beginning for some other reason as well, an instinct and something that seems like a distant memory of talking to this person, whomever it was. A head hangs from the slowly revolving fan, blood dry. It's been here for awhile, dead for awhile, but it still looks scared, like it's still alive. The corpse is on the floor below it. I turn around and puke my last meal onto the floor, and I collapse to the wall next to myself.

Fleeting images of this man. And a woman. I don't remember either of their names, but they're real people I know.

Probably a hiker, I realize, who stumbled upon this damned property, meaning to wait out a storm or something like that, and someone else was in here and wasn't too happy about it. I still have no idea why I was out in the woods, no knowledge as to where my car is. And I'm not hungry, for some reason.

Then that means the killer might be around here somewhere, I realize, upstairs waiting for me to turn my back just long enough-- No, it's not upstairs, or they're not upstairs, I reason. That makes them boxed in if I have the upper hand. They're in something wide, somewhere to fight. I must have gotten away before, but that's probably not going to happen again.

A crash echoes from the master bedroom, like a lamp breaking. I jump what feels like five feet into the air, and I turn quickly to hear a distorted scream from upstairs, as if an echo within itself. A woman, calling out for help, barely audible to my ears, although she's so close. My fear is justified now, and I'm already there mentally.

I grab a knife from the marble countertop the toaster oven rests on, the metal rusted over after the many years of its use, and I sprint upstairs, hoping I'm not too late. I turn the corner and break the door down to the bedroom, shoulder first barreling into the room like a bat out of hell.

Terrible, this is terrible. The woman I head calling out is dead as well, but she looks fresher than the head, I'd say at least a few minutes. This means that whoever is doing this is toying with me, and it might be more than one person. And how did I know that she was up here, surely an echo of the past? That's not possible, unless I knew, unless I found them.

My head is hurting again, I feel a throb that is slowly but surely driving me mad-- Maybe I'll remember what in the hell I'm doing out here in the woods, inside my least favorite childhood home, finding the corpses of dead hikers. If I'm lucky, it'll come back within the hour, but I'm not so sure I want to know what happened, or even how I got here.

I'm hearing the past regularly now, things I should not have heard and shouldn't hear. Voices echo around me, warning me in a subaudible tone about something, but it's not clear. This is not good, I tell myself knowingly, I'm losing it. I could hold it together after Dad was murdered before my eyes, in this very house by 'The Hawk', but--

The basement. Something is whispering in my ear that I need to go to the basement, and I can't seem to do anything but obey, because it's ancient, powerful. Be this as it may, I'm not stupid. This thing is dangerous, I'm dangerous. I might as well be the more dangerous of the two. Dynamic is not my middle name, I'm just scared.

There's a sword in the woman's back, but not the cause of death. I consider her for a moment before I tear it out of her spine. I don't know why in the hell there's a sword in my house, though, because the only sword I've ever seen is at my apartment in Lucida. But this sword looks like mine, for some reason-- odd, I didn't pack it. Mom must have kept Dad's.

Wait a damn second-- I came out here with stuff? Then where the hell did I drop it?

I don't know, and I really don't care.

Then I reason that someone rented the house. And then, 'The Hawk' came back to claim the other two lives, me and my Mom's, that should have been taken along with Dad. But he didn't get me, and this stuff was left out here to rot. Maybe it was all sold cheap by some hack real-estate agent who found the property for sale, and went with the house.

Something bumps into me on the steps, something I can't see. I wheel around in place, and feel something watching me again. I thought it went away, is the funny part. Eyes never go away, there's always something watching you, someone watching you. You can't escape, merely hide from them. And only for so long can you evade the world.

It's on the first floor, with whatever it is that's watching me, and it's following me keenly, studying my behavior and probably knowing that I'm afraid of whatever the hell it is. It's waiting for something, says a whisper in the back of my mind, my own mind. It's waiting for me to make a bad move, and that's when it'll strike, it'll rip my heart out and offer it to some demon.

Okay, I figure. Two can play at that game. I know enough about this kind of stuff from the horror movies I used to watch on Saturdays, like the Wolf Man and Dracula on the oldies channel. I know crosses are good, heavy blunt objects are always used by the hero, things like that. Then what am I? This thought strikes me as I walk back down the creaking, heavy steps, and turn to the basement hallway.

It's a fake, I reel around and sprint to the mantle, grabbing the family cross, in its blood-stained glory. The faded gold is just visible to any normal eye, let alone myself without contacts. The blood, I reason, is just my imagination. Problem with that idea is that it's sticky against my hands.

I swear I can hear something growling at me, dangerous... but at bay for now. I'm walking along now, down into the basement, into the heart of the evil, or the mouth. Which one? I don't know, and I'm not sure that it matters anymore, because I'm getting closer to the starting point, whereever this began.

There's a light breeze and a horrific stench down here, and I turn around to see victim number three clawing through the steps. The only reason I know he was clawing is because his hands, despite pale white and matching the dusty concrete floor, are still rigid, fingernails gone, and the blood sticky, new as the girl upstairs.

I gag and throw up onto the floor, staining the dirt eternally, to be met by victim four, still alive. I'm screaming, and I back up. That means I'm following the killer as I go, that I could be just a few steps behing the sick person who's killing innocent people in this house, in my house.

She's stretched to her limits in mid-air, arms twisted in ropes to make her an imperfect 'X'. I can tell for some odd reason that she's got only a few minutes left before she dies of blood loss, and to no surprise her back is red with blood from sword slashes all over. Her eyes are still wide, and she is still conscious, tape over her mouth. I break the first restraint, on her neck, and she sways forward a little big. I measure distance, and break one of the ones bound around her ankle.

Eventually, she's on the floor, panting, dying. I walk over to her and crouch beside her, looking her up and down, seeing the various cuts and bruises all over her body. She's like a living showcase for the dead and the doctors, the living war woman, in all her glory as she fades away into nothingness.

Are you all right? Who did this to you? I look around the basement, expecting someone to pop out of the shadows, scream Yahtzee, and let me have a clean shot at them with the sword. But this isn't the movies, I realize. This is life I'm joking about here, expecting the events of fiction to occur to me.

She just stares up at me with those wide green eyes, matching against her black hair, and she screams as loud as she can. As loud as anyone can, probably. Fire, murder, rape, oh god help me. It goes on. Come back, Sandy, come back and help me, get him away. No offense to her, but _what in the hell are you talking about!_

Just tell me, I yell, but it's no use. I can't shut her up. Just tell me, I'm gonna kill whoever did it! She scrambles across the room, ignoring me for a moment. I don't try to move, I simply watch her as she loses fear in her eyes. But then they widen again, seeing something that I'm not.

Across the room and half hidden behind a jolt of plumbing pipes, she simply points at the mirror to my right hand side before keeling over into the dirt and dust, dead from blood loss. I feel dizzy as I stand up, realizing she was truely shocked to death by my appearance, and I walk towards her, but stop in vain halfway there.

She takes a deep breath. She's just in shock.

I turn to the mirror sighing, to see something staring back at me with blood-red eyes and , and I know what it is; the thing is the monster that's been following me in here, just beyond sight. It squares me up, and dares me to step forward, it dares me to be more than human, immortal before it.

Oh, yeah, I think, stepping forward to meet the challenge, when lesser men fall back. It growls lowly, but that is no concern. It's like a dog and a cow, but not so much a mixture, and it's a great deal more dangerous than a shark from the look of it. Come get me, I taunt.

It jumps forward with a snarl, and the mirror shatters to my surprise; this is not a hallucination, this is totally real. It mauls me, and I'm thrown to the floor. The thing howls, and then leans down, taking a bite out of my shoulder.

I'm in pain, and the thing backs up. I know I can stand up and run, but immortality is what I need in this situation, what I must gain if I wish to fight the other evil. How I know this? I do not know, but it's making sense, and that's all that matters. It begins to tighten up, and it bounds forward towards me.

I put the sword up just in time, it seems that it was still in my left hand, and the beast can't change trajectory. With a satifying slump of defeat, it impales itself upon the sword. The beast is dead, but I am not, and I wonder why, because I know for a fact I should have gotten up and ran, it's in my character.

There's something behind the mirror, a doorway, and a long dark passage beyone that. Something is back there, I realize, waiting for me. I know already that whatever it is isn't friendly, it want's to kill me. I accept that fate, but I'm not going down without a fight.

I notice an ax, half buried in the side of the wooden boards alongside the wall, and I pull it out, dropping the sword onto the floor. No need for elegance where I'm going, it's not like I'm jousting with King Arthur.

Anyways, as much as I admire swords and their beauty, they aren't as good as any ax, sheerly because they lack brute force. Axes will break through a door, and swords through a human on a good day.

I'm down the hallway now, and I'm in this huge room that can't possibly have been here any longer than a few days, or it's been here forever. I have a sick feeling it's the latter. Voices echo around, telling me to go, go now, while I have a chance.

This isn't a person, I realize, and I hear a yell from behind me. I swing around, ax first through the air, and I'm met with a splatter of blood in my face. I blink a few times and look down to see a head, another woman's head, and she's screaming into nothingness now, on the floor.

It echoes around the cavern, and something unlocks beneath me. God help me, I'm the killer. It's all coming back to me now, before I woke up in the woods, why I woke up in the woods.

I came here to get Mom's stuff and take it to storage, and this... _thing _called me down to the basement. I moved the mirror,

found the evil, and killed everyone under its influence. But the last woman was smart, she ran outside, where I got knocked out for a few minutes, making me amnesiac. She came back in, looking for a phone, I stumbled in without my mind, she tried to free the girl, but had to run when she heard me coming.

And here. Now.

"Welcome back, prophet." My heart shrinks at this. So, this is my destiny, this is my true meaning. To be the foreshadower of the apocalypse. I look around, and I know the voice _is _the cavern. "The sacrifice is nearly complete. All I ask now is one thing: Open the portal, release me from the chains that bind me. We can rule the world. You just need to sacrifice the only surviving woman from the blight."

It's all making sense now about why the evil would make me kill, and the powerful voice is drawing me closer to it, I'm going to open the gate. I see a control panel of sorts, and before I can stop myself, I'm upon it.

Greedily, I'm twisting a knob, and I'm arranging a puzzle. This is wrong, warns the back of my mind, a mere whisper. You need to run. Run now. Run!

I shake it off temporarily, but I can't run. I'm crying, breaking down, but my hand still moves skillfully, arranging the words as they come in some language I don't know, and screams in all languages come from all around, telling me to stop.

I put the final piece in place as I get control back, but before I can set it down, centimeters away. I still can't read the tiles, but I know their meanings.

I've won, I've won. I beat it.

"Prophet, you must remember that this is your destiny," comes from behind me. I jump in surprise, I had forgotten the ancient voice that was commanding me. "This is your true meaning."

My fingers slip suddenly, and the tile floats down into place, locking itself along with the arrangement, as I stare on in horror. The game wasn't over, I misjudged. I know what's next. I know I die before the apocalypse, that was part of my fate. But it can't be me, I won't start the end of days.

Then, I suddenly remember the axe, still in my right hand. I scream, and with all my rage, I swing it down upon the board, taking my anger out upon the stone tiles, taking revenge for those people I killed under its' influence, destroying the hope it had that it could escape.

It screams at me in a rage, and I notice the exit passageway through the woods. I know that the house is alive, that it will continue the cycle until it finds a worthy host for the evil it contains. It's an all out run to the passage itself, and I'm aware the monster I killed is chasing me, some way, somehow-- alive.

I know with a sick satisfaction that if I escape from the holy barrier, I live-- and I will. I know I'll make it. And I have. I jump through the doors, them wide open for some reason. I keep running until I can taste blood, my life, seeping through my mouth and my nose. And then I run a bit more. I don't stop for another few minutes, and only because I needed to rest a bit while finding a way back to civilization.

But then I remember something mildly from earlier, something odd, not right, something I knew was out here, but couldn't quite place where it was, and it was following me then, I wonder if, maybe, since that thing was out here from the basement, what could be watching me--

Something screams at me from the bushes, and jumps out, a demonic appearance, so terrible that-- it's like I go into an epeleptic seizure, everything blurs up and shakes, and then nothing. I'm gone, lost in the deep muddy blackness. And it's smiling, the damn thing is smiling, through the clawed mouth, whatever it is. I've lost, I did lose, and now I must pay for it. It all echoes into nothingness.

Before I lose it, I reach down with my arms wildly, looking for a branch. I find one, and I swing it at the thing's face.

The skull splatters in, and it's dead, but I'm not. And that's all I know.

Echo into nothingness.

------

I can remember everything now, everything about myself and my past selves. And maybe it's for a greater good or something, but I know who I am. I know _what _I am.

I am the second horseman, not the first, and I am meant to open the second gate. Then it's a matter of the fourth horseman to follow through, the third ensuring that they do.

I stand up druggedly, and make my way back towards the cavern and my fate. Just as that voice said, I don't have a choice.

Look on the bright side, that means I can't do anything wrong. Maybe that's all of our lives.

I don't know. Fuck it.

Open the gate.

Let my part be complete. Then I'll just wait it out so I can reign in the darkness. The spirit beyond, the voice, it's just a messenger.

I was chosen.


End file.
